


this is me trying

by joannereads



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, First Kiss, M/M, Post-Canon, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:55:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25608514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joannereads/pseuds/joannereads
Summary: So this is what happens when you're still really angry at the way Season 10 ended, and Taylor Swift releases a new album. I don't write song-fic often, but this one worked so well and it just wrote itself in my head while I was in the car for a couple of hours. I'm not sorry!Here is my season 10 fix it, which is wrapped up in Taylor Swift's song, "this is me trying" from her folklore album. All her words are bold itallics, belong completely to her, but also made me think she might be a closet McDanno fan!Enjoy.
Relationships: Steve McGarrett/Danny "Danno" Williams
Comments: 47
Kudos: 175





	this is me trying

**Author's Note:**

> I'm writing this for several reasons. I received some pretty unpleasant anon hate on tumblr in the last couple of days, telling me to leave the 'action to the professionals' and focus on 'what you're good at: sex and misery'. Not sure if they meant my writing or my life haha!  
> So, rather than a diatribe about saying nice things, here's a fic of me doing what I'm good at, before I go back to what I'm apparently not in order to wrap up Close to Me. Kudos is love, anon hate in unnecessary.  
> Thanks.

**_I've been having a hard time adjusting_ **

**_I had the shiniest wheels, now they're rusting_ **

**_I didn't know if you'd care if I came back_ **

**_I have a lot of regrets about that_ **

As Steve settles into the plane seat, he feels a tight pain start in his chest. At first, he thinks he’s having a heart attack because that would be just his luck. (But then, he decides it’s just indigestion from the malasada he had wolfed down as he hurried towards the terminal.) The pain in Danny’s eyes is right there, behind his own eyelids, and he swallows that back too. Ultimately, it’s Steve’s fault Danny was physically hurt and Steve just needs to get away, to protect Danny, and maybe save himself in the process.

When the plane touches down in Vancouver so very many hours later, he disembarks, and leaves a confused Cath at the gate. He knows why she was there, and that Lincoln probably thought he was helping by trying to set them up. But there’s no room left in Steve’s heart for Cath. He realised this a long time ago, because his heart was too small to love anyone else. Each time someone left, someone died, his heart had shrunk a little to surround the people who were left-his ohana—the people who stayed. It’s not lost on him as he strides away from the terminal and out into the cool streets that it is now he who has left. Maybe it’s for the best. He absently rubs the centre of his chest, that pain still there in a way he can’t seem to shift. Antacids later, he concludes, once he’s checked in.

Steve is lying on his back in the hotel, staring straight up at the cracked ceiling, when his phone buzzes twice to signal a message.

 **Danno:** You were supposed to let me know you arrived, you putz.

 **Steve:** Sorry. I did. I’m here.

 **Danno:** I know. Junior pulled the manifest and hotel records. SEALs, what’re you gonna do?

Steve feels immediately devastated, because it’s his fault his friends feel the need to track and trace him. He’s disappeared so many time. So many times. But they’ve always come to find him, haven’t they? Always tracked him down and brought him home. Not this time, though. Steve will remember to tell them where he is, to let them know that he’s safe, because the idea of them worrying about him is too awful to bear any more. He spent a decade worrying about his mother and then she was just snatched away from him and he never got to change it, to better it. Steve feels the hot tears sliding down his face, towards his ears, before he even realises he’s crying. He’s been doing a lot of that recently.

When Daiyu Mei had Danny, he cried then. Privately, of course, tucked away in a bathroom stall. He’d cried so hard and desperately that he’d thrown up, his breakfast revolting against the situation as well. It was his Danno. And she _knew_ , just _knew_ that Danny was the way to get to him. What if she had gone after Grace? Or Charlie? Or all of them? Steve feels the tremors of anger again, but the real undercurrent is fear. Fear of failing them like his body is starting to fail him. The aches and pains have gotten worse: back, knees, shoulders. The scars are fading, but the pain isn’t. He stopped counting the scars, and for some he can barely remember where they came from anymore, and he knows that’s just fucked up. But that's his life, or at least it was.

**Steve:** It’ll be okay.

 **Danny:** I know. Just come back. You promised.

 **Steve:** I love you.

 **Danny:** Love you too.

**_Pulled the car off the road to the lookout_ **

**_Could've followed my fears all the way down_ **

**_And maybe I don't quite know what to say_ **

**_But I'm here in your doorway_ **

Danny pulls the Camaro over at his favourite look-out point near Diamond Head. It’s where he brought Gracie back in 2013 when Rachel was trying to take her to Las Vegas. It’s where Steve found him after they brought Matt home. It used to be his happy place, but now it’s the place he comes to remember the sadness, because it seems that’s what his life is made from.

Grace keeps sending him pictures from college in LA. He was miserable that she headed back to the mainland, but he understood that need to branch out and find your own way in the world. A slightly sicker, more twisted, part of him was also grateful because she was less of a target all the way over there. The idea that she could have been taken instead of him is still a vivid pain that lances through him when he allows it.

Up here, today, under the endless blue sky, he refuses to let it swallow him. He snaps a picture, sends it to Steve, hoping to tempt him back from wherever he is right now. When he gets a stunning shot of the Canadian Rockies, he realises he’s going to need a little more than blue skies and ocean.

While he understands Steve’s need to flee, he can’t get on board with the plan. He would have gone with him, if he’d been asked, but he wasn’t. Steve left him here alone, trying to recover from almost-death (again, Danny notes wearily) alone. Steve’s never left him like that before. Danny rubs absently at his chest, at the dull ache there, and wonders if these wounds will ever heal. Charlie had managed to catch him in the gut with his elbow yesterday and the pain had bloomed out through him snatching his breath. Junior had seen, and scooped the boy up in a whirl of screeches and giggles: he was a good man. Charlie would have been devastated to know he had hurt his Danno.

Danny rubs at the dull ache again. He still can’t place where it’s coming from or why. He turns his gaze back to the ocean. This island is his home now, but at this moment he feels like something is missing. His brain is telling him nothing has changed, but his heart is telling him differently. His phone begins to vibrate, and he thinks it might be Steve which makes him smile. As he lifts the phone, the caller ID tells him it’s the Governor. Very different conversation then.

**_I just wanted you to know_ **

**_That this is me trying_ **

**_I just wanted you to know_ **

**_That this is me trying_ **

Steve sends Danny messages every day, and calls most days too. They talk about anything and everything, and Steve knows more about Danny than he ever did. Things he thought he knew have changed over time, and the way that he misses Danny is changing too. What’s that they say about absence making the heart grow fonder? They have also argued a lot less. Maybe not being in the car helps, Steve wonders wryly. Something has changed with Danny though. His voice is looser, more relaxed, and he doesn’t talk about the job. Steve knows he hasn’t been cleared for active duty yet, but he thought he would at least get office stories.

He calls Junior too, and Lou and Tani. Those conversations are always different. Junior tells him about Danny, though he’s clearly been spending more time at Tani’s than in Steve’s house, which he supposes is a good thing for both of them and they deserve happiness. Tani tells him about work, which he doesn’t really want to hear, but it’s her way of trying to be normal he guesses. So he hums and ahs in all the right places.

Lou is always an enigma. Some days they talk about sport, other days about past cases that still haunt him. But some days, he talks about Danny too. And Steve is beginning to realise that he was way more obvious about everything than he had thought. Lou turns into a counsellor of sorts, as does Renee who always asks to speak with him. When on these calls, the ache is a little less painful and he can shut it away for a little while.

He picks up the phone and calls Danny. It’s the ass end of night where he is, so he knows where Danny is he’ll be awake. It rings endlessly before Danny’s voicemail picks up. Steve won’t worry. Maybe he’s with Charlie, or they’re eating, or he simply left his phone upstairs. When Danny’s message ends and there’s a beep, he sucks in a deep breath and fumbles for what he wants to say and how he wants to say it, but he can’t think.

“I miss you.”

It’s all he has, and he hangs up, slumping backwards into the chair and rubbing at his face. He wants to cry again, and it’s starting to feel a little pathetic.

**_They told me all of my cages were mental_ **

**_So I got wasted like all my potential_ **

**_And my words shoot to kill when I'm mad_ **

**_I have a lot of regrets about that_ **

Danny knows he can be hot headed, he’s not stupid, but he also knows it’s just all that Italian passion sneaking out. Mostly, people understand it and let it slide, but recently Grace hasn’t been putting up with it.

“When are you going to go get him?” she demands. Danny presses his fingers into the corners of his eyes. Every time she calls she asks the same damn question.

“I’m not. As I have told you a thousand times already, he doesn’t want me to.”

“Danno. You cannot be this stupid. As I have said a thousand times before,” she scoffs, throwing his words back at him, “You always go get him.”

Over the last few months, Grace has been asking a lot of questions about her childhood. She’s been trying to sort through her own traumas, which Danny feels the most overwhelming guilt about, and her therapist told her to ask the questions. Apparently, she understood if things were classified, but if they weren’t then she deserved to know. So, they’ve had a lot of long phone calls where he’s been forced to bare his soul and the agonies that torture him in order to help her move forward. Colombia. The barrel. Korea. Steve. Steve. Steve. It was Grace who pointed out how many of his agonies are shared.

“He needs time alone,” he says again. “He’s trying to do what you are, monkey, trying to figure out how to move forward.”

“And how are you doing that, Danno?” she asks, her voice that of a worldly woman rather than the college-aged teen that she really is.

“Recently? It’s been therapist-Grace,” he admits to her, and he hears her shaky breath, bites back tears he knows she’s also struggling with.

“If you love him, why don’t you just go tell him? Maybe he needs you to help him find his way back home?”

“If he wanted that, he wouldn’t have just gone, would he?” Danny spits, and the anger he has isn’t directed at her. She knows it, but the tone still stings.

“I’m sorry. I’ll stop pushing. But Danno?” she pauses. He waits but realises she needs him to acknowledge this before it moves on.

“Yes, monkey?”

“You owe him the truth. You need to talk to him. Will you try?”

Fresh tears spring into his eyes and he has to take a few seconds to try and pull himself together. Eddie pushes his head up onto Danny’s knee, and he pets the dog mindlessly.

“I’ll try. If I can.”

**_I was so ahead of the curve, the curve became a sphere_ **

**_Fell behind all my classmates and I ended up here_ **

**_Pourin' out my heart to a stranger_ **

**_But I didn't pour the whiskey_ **

Steve feels pleasantly numb. The bar he stumbled into out of the rain was dark and quiet, and the whiskey cheap. After his third, he asked the pretty bartender to leave the bottle. The bartender did just that, but has come back every now and then to check on him, see if he wants more ice, and to flirt shamelessly Steve thinks.

Each time he’s approached, he pastes a smile to his lips but he knows it doesn’t reach his eyes. The further down the bottle he goes, the less he feels in general, and that’s when the bartender makes a move.

“No!” Steve says, dragging his hand back from beneath the warm palm that had been placed on it. “I’m sorry,” he says again, realising that the young man before him looks scared. “It’s not you.”

And then the whiskey seems to loosen his tongue, and he begins to spill all his secrets to the bartender he doesn’t know. The guy just listens, eyes wide in some places, more terrified in others. Steve sanitises everything as he goes, doesn’t break any confidences or give away any classified secrets, but he does begin to realise that every other sentences starts with Danny’s name, and the ones in the between include it too.

“Sounds like it’s been a rough few years,” the young man says, pouring Steve a strong coffee from the jug at the back of the bar. “But you’re lucky to have someone in your life who loves you so much.” The bartender’s smile is wistful, like the story he’s just heard was romantic instead of scarring. And Steve begins to realise that maybe, just maybe, it actually was.

**_I just wanted you to know_ **

**_That this is me trying_ **

**_I just wanted you to know_ **

**_That this is me trying_ **

Steve passes out when he gets back to the hotel. The whiskey and the confessions exhausted him and he knows he’ll regret it in the morning, but he doesn’t change or drink water, just collapses face first onto the bed.

When he awakes, he feels dreadfully nauseous, his eyes are gritty, and his skin itches. He stands shakily and strips off on his way to the bathroom. Turning up the heat, he steps into the cramped shower stall and just waits to feel better. He closes his eyes, and finds his wandering thoughts turn, as they always do, to Danny. He sighs and the humming ache in his chest intensifies. He misses him.

He starts to lather up, and his mind continues to wander. Danny on his beach, Danny on his sofa, Danny in the passenger seat of his own damn car, Danny in his bed.

That last image is a little startling. He’s seen enough of his partner’s body to be able to imagine, pretty vividly it would appear, what it might be like to lie next to Danny in his bed, at home, in the gentle breeze from the Trade Winds. His hair would ruffle, his smile would be delicious, and his skin would be warm and firm under Steve’s fingers.

Steve groans, his cock stirring as the images increase in intensity, the sensations almost real under his hands where he rubs them thoughtlessly across his own skin. Of all the revelations that he’s had over these past few weeks, this one is weirdly the least shocking. His thoughts continue to wander, delving into places he never thought they would. He strokes himself to imagined images of Danny’s mouth on his, and comes with Danny’s name in his mouth.

As he’s drying himself off, sated and relaxed in a way he hasn’t been for some time, he notices his phone blinking. Three messages from Danny.

 **Danny:** You up?

Steve glances at the clock, seven a.m. That means that it’s barely four in Oahu.

 **Danny:** I can’t sleep. Keep me company.

 **Danny:** You sleeping?

Steve dials without thinking. Danny answers, his voice gruff and sleep soft. But he doesn’t know what to say. He just orgasmed to images of his partner, who is a few thousand miles away, and has no idea.

“Hello?” Danny asks into the silence.

“Hi.” It’s all he’s got.

“Everything okay?”

“Hmm.”

“Sure?”

“Miss you, Danno.”

“So come home.”

But Steve isn’t ready. He can’t face stepping back through the threshold of his own house and feeling like he doesn’t belong. But he longs for Danny. He wants to drink beer with him, he wants to watch the game with him, he wants to play with Charlie with him: he wants to be a family with Danny. The ache is suddenly searing again.

“Charlie wants to know if he can paint the walls of Mary’s room blue because he doesn’t like the green. Whaddya think, babe?”

“I think that would be good,” Steve replies. He is soft and warm at the thought of Danny turning Steve’s father’s house into a home for himself and his son. He isn’t leaving. He isn’t going anywhere. Suddenly, Steve can breathe again.

**_At least I'm trying_ **

When Danny steps off the plane he is hit immediately by a brutal wind and driving rain. He grins stupidly: just like Jersey. However, the lack of cabs and his stupid idea of walking soon catches up with him. He’s cold and wet, aching in places he thought the aches had finally gone, and his bag is heavy in his hand.

But he doesn’t care.

He finally listened to Grace. He’s come to bring Steve home.

**_And it's hard to be at a party_ **

**_When I feel like an open wound_ **

**_It's hard to be anywhere these days_ **

**_When all I want is you_ **

When there’s a knock at his room door, Steve is momentarily startled. He hasn’t ordered room service. Immediately, he thinks Cath has hunted him down and that the clarity with which he explained she was bad for him has perhaps not sunk in correctly. Then he feels bad for assuming the worst of her (even though he has endless evidence that this is totally something she would do, likely before disappearing again).

When he swings the door open and find a drenched Danny dripping into the hallway, he feels his jaw slacken and his mouth hang open on a stunned ‘o’.

“You gonna let me in, or do I need to keep watering the floor?”

Steve shuffles back and directs Danny in. Danny. Here.

Steve watches him drop the bag near the bathroom door, stepping in to grab a towel—Steve’s towel, Steve notes, which makes him a little warm inside—to dry off his face and hair.

“What are you doing here?” Steve asks. Because why wouldn’t he? There’s literally no other question.

“I’ve come to bring you home.” Danny says it with a shrug, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. And maybe it should be. Maybe it is. Because the awful pain that had taken up residence in the centre of Steve’s chest has gone as suddenly and as completely as Danny’s presence. Danny starts to shuffle things around in his bag, before pulling out a clean, dry t shirt and his comfortable sweat pants, the ones Steve loves because they’re so soft and . . . Steve needs to turn away.

He busies himself ordering room service coffees and sandwiches. There is no way Danny is planning on going back outside, and it’s obvious, but Steve can at least make sure he’s fed.

Danny sits on the couch and fires off a couple of text messages in quick succession.

“Lou, so he knows I made it. Grace so she knows I did as I was told.”

“As you were told?”

“She was the one who said I had to come get you.”

Steve is overwhelmingly grateful in that very moment, so much that he feels his breathing become rapid and shallow.

“Come, sit down,” Danny says, patting the chair and flicking the TV on, scanning through the channels quickly before setting on a hockey game.

Steve sits. He’s uncomfortable and it shows, but more because he’s still surprised. He’s grateful when the room service knock comes, because it gives him something to do with his hands. He pours coffee, which is bitter but hot so it will do, and divides the sandwiches. Half of the meatball melt and half the chicken salad each. He does it without thinking, just as he’d ordered without thinking, just knowing what Danny would like and what he would share.

Danny takes the plate without question, chews and swallows thoughtfully. And Steve relaxes because this is normal, this is them, isn’t it? "Why now?" Steve asks. "I couldn't wait at home.on my own, worrying about you. It was time."

**_You're a flashback in a film reel_ **

**_On the one screen in my town_ **

****

**_And I just wanted you to know_ **

**_That this is me trying (Maybe I don't quite know what to say)_ **

**_I just wanted you to know_ **

**_That this is me trying_ **

It’s dark and they’ve talked for hours. The TV was switched off some time ago. Danny has been regaling him with ‘Tani’s Descent into Insanity’ as Danny has called it. Seems she has a wild streak she’s struggling to tame, struggling to pull back, and the unspoken ‘without you to do it in her place’ is felt just as keenly as if it had been slapped into Steve’s face.

Steve has been staring at Danny for the better part of an hour, watching his partner’s brilliant face as it lights up at the stories. He’s laughed along, easily imagining the escapades, the locations vivid in Hawaiian colour in his brain. It feels safe. When Danny’s cell starts to ring, the spell feels somewhat broken, and Steve finds himself sitting back from where he had begun to encroach on Danny’s space.

“Hey, it’s Grace.” It’s a video call, and Grace’s beautiful face lights up the screen. “Hey, Grace-face. Look who’s here!” Danny says, and he hauls Steve into shot. Grace’s squeal can only be classed as delighted, and she stumbles over her hellos and how are yous.

“Danno. You listened!” she finally says, and Danny blushes a little but nods. “And you talked, yes?”

“All afternoon,” Steve says wryly, “It’s Danno after all.” Grace smiles at him, but it’s a little thinner, and she glances at Danny with a slightly creased brow. Steve’s missing something, he knows it, but he’s going to wait it out because Danny is clearly not ready.

“Well, I have news for you Uncle Steve. Danno knows, but I wanted to tell you myself. I’m coming home.”

Steve feels his own confusion leak through his smile now. “What do you mean? For break?”

“Nope. Transferring to U of H. I love it here but,” she pauses, smiles at Steve and makes his heart want to burst out of his chest with the intensity. “I miss you, Uncle Steve, and I hate being so far away. I’m coming home for you.”

“And me of course,” Danny says with an exaggerated eye-roll.

“Sure, Danno. And for you.”

Danny worries. He worries that Grace won’t be happy. He worries that she’s giving up her dreams for him, and for Steve. But she’s told him so many times that this is what she wants and he’s starting to believe her.

“Don’t do that, Gracie,” Steve says, his face darker. “Don’t come home for me.”

“I miss my family. I thought it would get easier, but it just gets harder. I’m coming home. We’ll get to hang out on the beach, and surf, and eat dinners. And I just can’t wait. I need it. We all need it.”

The call ends when Grace is called away, but she tells them she loves them both. Steve feels tears burning behind his eyelids and he digs the heels of his hands in deep to scrub them away.

“You okay?” Danny asks again. He asks it all the time. Steve contemplates briefly using the same line, but he doesn’t. Damn it, he spilled everything to some random guy in a bar but finds it hard to put the words together in front of Danno. Danno, who loves him, and loves him enough to travel coach for eleven hours to come get him.

“No. I’m not, but it’s better now that you’re here.”

Danny tugs him into a hug and Steve wrenches the tears back a little, because he wants to enjoy his time and not spend his life crying. But he misses everyone so damned much: his Dad, his Mom, Joe. Surrounded by darkness and the ghosts of his family, Steve clutches onto Danny and soaks in his warmth and the reassurance of his presence.

Eventually, he pulls back and gestures at the door.

“Shall we go grab some dinner?”

Danny cracks his jaw with a yawn and shakes his head.

“I’m tired. Can we just go to bed?”

And this is it, isn’t it. The crux of the whole thing. Danny’s been living with him for months, and then living in his house without him for a couple of them, but never in the same bed. Yet, Steve sees that this is exactly what Danny means, and he’s both thrilled and terrified, coated with a good thick layer of anxiousness for good measure.

“Sure,” he shrugs and stands to stretch out his back.

He turns and catches Danny watching him.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Danny huffs, a small smile on his face. He stands too, copies the stretch, and then points.

“Which side you want?” he asks. Steve turns to him then, heart racing in his throat and eyes wide, because he doesn’t want a side—he wants _Danny_! He doesn’t wait, deciding instead to do what he has relied on all his life, read a situation and act on it. He grabs Danny’s face in the palms of his hands, delighting at the feel of Danny’s stubble across his skin and realising it is so much better than his brain had conjured in the shower, and hesitates long enough for Danny to push him away.

He doesn’t.

Steve presses their mouths together in a tender kiss, breathing shakily, his eyes closed to his fears of rejection and abandonment and loneliness.

“Thank you,” he says gently,

“For what?” Danny asks, and Steve notes the faint blush of heat on his cheeks and the slightly breathless way he speaks.

“For coming for me.”

“Babe!” Danny gasps before reaching for Steve’s hips and clutching at the shirt there, before kissing Steve. This time there’s heat and promise and Steve presses his tongue to the seam of Danny’s lips which opens easily and their kiss deepens. It’s so much better than Steve had imagined, especially when Danny slides his fingers under the hem of his shirt and presses his warm fingers to Steve’s back. Steve shivers, presses his tongue deeper. It’s weird, because Steve feels like there’s something invisible inside him that’s stitching him back together, making him whole again, pulling all the fragments of his spirit back into the centre of him.

Danny presses closer and Steve groans. Danny pulls back a little and Steve groans again, pulling him back in. Danny laughs softly, affectionately, and presses a hand over Steve’s heart.

“So we’re really gonna do this?” he asks. “Go from zero to a hundred, from nothing to everything, just like that?”

“Danny, how is it from nothing? I love you, I’ve told you that so many times: I love you. That’s not nothing.”

“No, it’s not,” Danny says, cupping Steve’s cheek and smiling, an apology for something hurtful but accidental. “I just mean, we’ve never even shared a bed, and now sex?”

“I want you. I need you. But if you don’t want that, or anything, then I’m okay with that Danny because I just want you. Anyway you will let me have you.” He presses their foreheads together. “You're all that matters.”

“I want you too,” Danny says, and then they’re caught up in the whirlwind of another kiss that sears Steve’s skin and leaves him burning with arousal. Danny presses Steve back towards the bed, pulling at the t shirt Steve is wearing like it offends him, and maybe it does.

By the time they are finally lying down, neither is clothed, and both are breathing desperately. Danny lavishes kisses down Steve’s neck, across his collarbone. He stops at every welt and scar, presses a hot, tender kiss to it.

“I remember almost all of these,” he says into Steve’s skin.

“You probably remember more than me,” Steve whispers.

“I bet you remember mine more,” Danny says and Steve realises he’s right. Danny’s pain is worse than his own.

Danny draws their lips together again before wrapping his hand around Steve’s cock, using his pre-cum to ease the way a little, before stroking softly. Barely there touches that drive Steve crazy in seconds. He presses into Danny, until he pushes Danny over, and then he’s rutting wildly into Danny’s skin, the feel of their erections pressed against each other delicious and overwhelming for both of them.

Steve wants it to last but he knows it won’t. They have more time, endless time if Danny will give it to him. Steve comes with Danny’s name on his lips and Danny’s hand on his cock, and it’s something he never thought would happen.

**_At least I'm trying_ **

Danny clutches Steve’s fingers tightly as they step off the plane and onto the concourse. In fact, he’s barely let go of Steve in the last three days. Now they’re finally home, on Oahu, and Steve looks pale and terrified.

 _Wait until he sees what I’ve done to his house_ , Danny thinks wryly.

Danny hasn’t told Steve that he’s redecorated. He’s tried to erase the pain from the house, rearranged and replaced photos and furniture until something that resembles a new home has emerged, a little colour on some of the walls—not just Charlie’s.

Danny hasn’t told Steve that he’s leaving Five-0. The Governor has asked him to take up a TO position with HPD, training new recruits and updating older ones, as well as supporting those pursuing their detective’s badges. It’s nine-to-five hours, which is weird, and also awesome. He jumped at it. Danny doesn’t want to get shot at any more.

Danny hasn’t told Steve that their Ohana is waiting back at the house because Danny warned them Steve was still easily overwhelmed. But he’ll find out all of this soon enough.

Danny has told Steve how much he loves him, how much he can’t live without him, and how he can’t keep pretending anymore. That this is it for him: grow old together, bitching at each other spitelessly into their old age. Steve had murmured something about agreeing completely. But then, he still hasn’t seen the house.

Danny has told Steve that he can’t go back to work for Five-0 because the job is killing him. Steve nodded because he knows, he knew it a long time ago but couldn’t admit it. Danny asked if he knew what he was going to do instead, and Steve had rolled him over into the mattress and answered with a simple, “you,” which was not what Danny meant but it was good in the moment. Danny knows Steve still needs time, lots of time.

Outside the airport, Danny is taken aback to see Rachel waiting. Charlie hurtles over towards them the minute he sees them, even though Rachel had been trying to hold him back. Charlie throws himself into Steve’s arms, and Danny would be offended if it wasn’t so adorable.

“Uncle Steve! You came home!”

“Of course I did, Charlie. I’ll always come back to you.”

Charlie plants a damp kiss on Steve’s cheek, and Danny can’t miss the blink of tears that fill Steve’s eyes.

“Hey, what about me?” Danny asks, distracting the boy and letting the man recover. Charlie grasps Danny around the neck and allows himself to be slid over. Steve smiles gratefully while he quickly pulls himself together. Then he wraps his arms around them both and presses kisses to the tops of both their heads and Danny figures the cat was probably out of the bag anyway with the hand holding, but he still chooses not to look at Rachel before reaching up and pressing a kiss to Steve’s mouth as well.

“Okay?” Danny asks.

“No. At least I’m trying,” Steve says – his new and painfully real response to that question, and one Danny values a thousand percent more than ‘Yes’.

“I love you,” Danny says over Charlie’s head.

“I love you too, Danny. Thanks for bringing me home.”


End file.
